John Fogerty – Proud Mary

Your choice of guitars has changed quite a bit since Creedence. You started with the Rickenbacker, a Gibson ES-175, and a Les Paul Custom. You picked up a Telecaster to record 1973’s Blue Ridge Rangers, and then a Washburn Falcon for Centerfield? What drew you to the Falcon?

Well, it was some time during the “hot rod” days in the middle to late ’70s, and you were seeing pickups without covers everywhere. DiMarzio and Seymour Duncan were getting popular, and in my own fumbling way I was intrigued with all that. I’m pretty sure it was Leo’s Music in Oakland where I went and tried a bunch of different guitars, and I remember picking up the Washburn in that store. The pickups sounded really hot, especially on the bridge pickup. I think I was intrigued too because it had a through-the-body neck. That was very culturally correct at that time—you know, it gives you more sustain. I think it had brass hardware on it, and it had those pickups, but the neck and everything else was perfect. You could get a lot of different sounds out of it. At the time, I really thought that was gonna be my guitar for the rest of my life—at least for the Centerfield album, and certainly on “The Old Man Down the Road.” When I toured in ’86, I played it quite a bit.

Another Gibson ES-175 was stolen out of Fogerty's car, as he reports in the Vintage Guitar magazine. He also discusses this guitar briefly in an interview.

I’ve got a wonderful old Gibson ES-175 with a single P-90, but it’s right in the middle; it’s not neck, it’s not bridge. When I first picked it up, I had a thumbpick on, and the strap was adjusted just right, and it just fell into my hands. I started doing kind of a rockabilly thing, and I plugged it in, and it made you go there, of course. I had a 175 I recorded “Proud Mary” on, and had every intent of doing “Bad Moon Rising” on it, too. But it got stolen out of my car, and I quickly went down to the guitar shop, and said, “Now’s my chance; I’m getting a Les Paul.”